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It has become an article of faith on the part of establishment politicians and commentators in the West that the Russian government (always referred to as “the Kremlin”) is manipulating from behind the scenes the political processes in Western countries.

The result is a string of allegations that the Russians swung the US election to President Donald Trump (now an article of faith amongst many Democrats), that the Russians were somehow behind the Brexit vote (though it is unclear how), that they somehow engineered Italian Prime Minister Renzi’s defeat in the Italian constitutional referendum – though why they should have done this is unclear since Renzi was their friend – and that they are now interfering in the coming elections in Germany and France.

What all these claims have in common is a remarkable absence of evidence to support them. The most documented claims have been those concerning the US Presidential election but the reports the US intelligence community has published have been completely fact-free and are undoubtedly wrong.

It is not therefore surprising if the German intelligence service having investigated the claims of Russian interference in the political processes in Germany has come up with nothing.

Unfortunately, as with all conspiracy theories that depend on what are ultimately paranoid beliefs rather than facts, that will almost certainly not be the end of the matter.

The idea that Russia is able to control political outcomes in Western countries through a single television station – whose coverage is never described fully or fairly – is actually fantastic. However it seems that that is what the once mighty Western establishment now believes.